It's been sometime since Microsoft's "iPod killer" entered the portable music player (PMP) market, but whether the Zune's softly killing reigning Apple's market share isn't quite clear. Nevertheless, most reports suggest that iPod is still king with most companies either already out or coming out with their own variations of it.

So the one-and-a-half-year-old Zune seems to be now buckling up to take on the PMP market. Microsoft yesterday announced the launch of new features that will complement their player. Users of Zune, who are also members of the online Zune community will now have new features to entertain themselves with. Zune has added new features to address better integration between the software, the online music community, and the store. These include the ability to sync multiple Zune players at once. The Zune also now includes features such as auto play lists, ability to browse videos, edit album and track information, organize collections, gap-less playback, sync groups and Zune reminders.

"Zune Social", a music community Web site for Zune owners, was launched last November. Microsoft has now integrated the downloadable Zune application with the Zune community Web site so that members can send messages to friends, look at their music collections, shop for new content, and drag-and-drop Zune cards to their players, all without opening a Web browser.

And, the online Zune market place will now offer TV episodes for download. Consumers will be able to choose from more than 800 episodes of popular television shows to download and watch on their computer/s or Zune/s; these include: Comedy Central's South Park, FUNimation's Afro Samurai and Witchblade, MTV's The Hills, NBC's The Office, Heroes and 30 Rock, Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants, and many more.